Most Tri-Cities students still half year behind in math, reading. How 2 schools caught up
On average, students in Tri-City schools are still a half year behind on math and reading when comparing their most recent test scores to 2019.
The stark finding is based on new data from 2023 standardized testing.
Average test scores in the Tri-Cities remain below pre-pandemic levels and students are still struggling to catch up years after schools took up temporary remote learning measures, according to findings from Stanford and Harvard universities’ the Education Recovery Scorecard.
Students lost a historic amount of quality instruction time in the classroom time after the COVID pandemic hit U.S. communities in March 2020.
Aside from essential programs, nearly all school buildings in the country closed immediately in the wake of the pandemic and students quickly pivoted to remote learning.
Here is what students in the Mid-Columbia region lost between 2019 and 2023. Data reflects years lost or gained in subject achievement:
- Kennewick School District: -0.45 in math, -0.33 in reading.
- Pasco School District: -0.41 in math, -0.34 in reading.
- Richland School District: -0.09 in math, +0.03 in reading.
- North Franklin School District: -0.07 in math, +0.03 in reading.
- Finley School District: -0.08 in math, -0.34 in reading.
- Kiona-Benton City School District: -0.39 in math, -0.63 in reading.
- Columbia (Walla Walla) School District: -0.56 in math, -0.77 in reading.
- Prosser School District: -0.69 in math, -0.46 in reading.
While some districts — including Columbia and Prosser — remain more than a half-year behind their 2019’s scores, others including Richland and North Franklin have returned to where they were before the pandemic.
‘All-hands-on-deck’
“It was an all-hands-on-deck approach,” said North Franklin Superintendent Jim Jacobs. “We had paraeducators, teachers — everyone who could walk and talk and had a pulse was helping students... I was pretty pleased with our educational community in serving these students during that time.”
After health mandates loosened in fall 2020, North Franklin was among the first districts in the region to return its 2,000 students to some form of in-person learning. The district quickly brought K-6 students back to in-person and set 7-12 students on a hybrid schedule as the school implemented social distancing measures.
Once health mandates expired, the district found success in catching students up with a robust school enrichment and intervention program — which it plans to continue funding after their COVID funds expire — and summer school activities. It was all about keeping students engaged and helping families to address their social-emotional needs.
“We took a really humanistic approach to solving this problem that none of us had ever faced before,” Jacobs said. The student population of his district is comprised of 34% English language learners, 32% migrant and more than 70% free or reduced lunch. “Everyone really focused in on how we could support students and be supportive of students during this time.”
With COVID mostly in the rearview mirror, and a learning loss catastrophe avoided, North Franklin still has other far more important challenges ahead to face.
Students there are still lagging behind by more than a grade level when compared with national averages. And the traumatic impact of COVID continues to stunt the growth of some of the district’s youngest learners.
Richland School District invested millions the past couple years to keep classroom sizes small, create programs to address and respond to mental health crises, expand summer school programs and opportunities, and implement progress monitoring systems.
The district also earmarked $150,000 alone in COVID funds for “outside-the-box” efforts to support education and address building-level learning loss.
End of ESSER money
Congress provided nearly $200 billion in federal aid to K-12 schools during the pandemic in the form of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds, or ESSER, with most of that going to high-poverty school districts. State and federal guidance was broad at first, but has since narrowed to focus on learning recovery the last couple years.
Over the past few years, Tri-City school districts have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ESSER to respond to the pandemic and catch students back up. That funding has taken the form of summer school programs, high-quality and intensive tutoring, adding teachers to classrooms and hosting after-school instruction.
One estimate from Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab estimates it would collectively take more than $77 million in reading and math tutoring for Kennewick, Richland and Pasco to collectively rectify an average learning loss of three months in math and two months in reading.
Despite the infusion of cash, academic performance remains lower and more unequal than in 2019 in all but the wealthiest communities, according to research from Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research.
With the third and final installment of ESSER set to expire this September, that means many students will likely never catch up.
Many elementary and middle school students have made up significant ground since schools closed to in-person learning, but they are nowhere close to being fully caught up, according to a recent data story in the New York Times. Across the country, students have recovered about a third of what they lost in math and about a quarter in reading.
Out of all 50 states, Washington spent the most amount of time in remote or hybrid learning, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard. Public school students spent nearly all of the pandemic year — a calculated 95% — in learning models other than in-person instruction.
Because of that, Washington is one of 17 states more than one-third grade level behind in math and among 14 states more than one-third grade level behind in reading.
